Anyone using rPath Virtual Appliances?

[Duke]

rPath offer quite a lot of different appliances (you can find them in VMware's Virtual Appliance list) and they generally seem to be pretty good quality. I have a few cases where I'd prefer to deploy a blog or wiki on it's own virtual server rather than have it on a shared server, and the rPath appliances require less maintenance and setup than a full server install.

 

However, I simply can't get the appliance (or more accurately, the Conary update service) to go through our proxy, which is required by our ISP. I have three proxies to choose from, two without authentication, and it won't work with any of them. Conary just reports 'invalid proxy for http'.

 

Has anyone had any luck with this? Or any rPath experiences they'd care to share?

 

EDIT: Urgh, the rPath Wordpress appliance is from 2007 which has an old version or Conary which doesn't have proper proxy support...

 

Chris

Edited December 14, 2009 by Duke

[pete]

However, I simply can't get the appliance (or more accurately, the Conary update service) to go through our proxy, which is required by our ISP. I have three proxies to choose from, two without authentication, and it won't work with any of them. Conary just reports 'invalid proxy for http'.

 

Has anyone had any luck with this? Or any rPath experiences they'd care to share?

 

EDIT: Urgh, the rPath Wordpress appliance is from 2007 which has an old version or Conary which doesn't have proper proxy support...

 

Chris

 

Try adding

 

export http_proxy="http://IP:PORT"

 

to root's ~/.bashrc. Log out, then back in again for the changes to take.

 

That works on OpenFiler, which uses rPath, through a SG proxy.

 

rPath is ok until you need to add something to the appliance, that's when it gets annoying and you end up rolling your own vm.

Edited December 14, 2009 by pete
typo

[Duke]

Thanks mate, I'm about to try the BitNami appliances as they look a lot more up to date anyway, if I go back to rPAth I'll give that a go.

[Kamran7860]

I never used rPath if it doesn't work try Turnkey Linux. I have been using for for quite a few virtual appliances know.

[benaus]

I always found it better to make your own appliances.Takes a little more time to setup but will make it easier in the long run.

 

Knowing the ins and outs of the servers you run is a definite advantage, and if you take the time and write down each step you can pile it into a sh script for later

[Duke]

Thanks for the help guys. The main reason I was looking for an appliance rather than rolling my own is that these will likely be used for relatively short-term projects so having the ability to quickly deploy and configure the server was a big plus. The rPath stuff is very nice in that you can configure all the main server settings (networking, mail relays, proxy config, etc.) from a web-based interface in about 2 minutes, plus they do a very stripped-down install that requires less maintenance and updates.

 

The turnkey and bitnami installs were both nice, although the turnkey WordPress config had some weird vhosts and virtual directories on Apache rather than just using aliases which made it kind of hard to get WordPress being served from the URL I wanted. Time for a bit more playing I think but your opinions have been much appreciated.

 

Chris